Not necessarily. There were quite a bit of conflicting reports but I remember the media definitely spurring the news on.

According to Gazzetta dello Sport, United and Juve had come to a €44 million agreement for Vidal.

El Mercurio, a newspaper from Sampaoli made reference to a potential about £47m deal between Juventus and Manchester United. The same deal was apparently called off over fear of his knee injury.

Gazzetta dello Sport also ran with the story that United finally had made a €43m bid for Vidal.

I can't seem to find the exact sources for some of these links but I distinctively remember it being very close. There's quite a number of articles available with a Google search if you want to put yourself through all that.

The whole saga was a massive clusterfuck.